Roughly two years ago I started eating low carb. It was fantastic. I felt fantastic and steadily lost weight, somewhere around thirty pounds (don't know my exact starting weight). I was a member here, but didn't spend much time on the boards.

Last year I became a much more active member. I found the support and ideas to be fantastic. The different recipes were fun to try and I liked having substitutes like coconut bark, OMM, oopsie rolls for some of the foods I had eliminated from my diet but loved. I didn't have any of these items often, they were still a special treat.

And I stalled.

And stalled.

And stalled.

I came back to the boards looking for ways to break my stall. I started adding coconut oil to my coffee to get more good fats into my diet to help keep me from feeling hungry and help with burning fat. If there was a suggestion to break a stall, I tried it.

Around October I stopped being so strict. Started adding pasta, bread, sugar, etc. back into my diet and gained back a few pounds, but I wasn't adding much back in so the gain wasn't too bad. In January and the first part of February I just let it go, beer, pizza, the whole nine yards, and almost twenty more pounds magically appeared.

Back to low carb I came, and after just over one week I'm down almost fifteen pounds despite starting right before my TOM. The pounds never came off this quickly before, and I thought about what I'm doing differently this time. This time I have been eating only real, unprocessed or minimally processed foods. This wasn't my intention in the beginning, just the way it happened. Going forward I'm going to stick with this WOE. If I can't pronounce it or replicate it in my own kitchen, it isn't going in my body.

No frankenfoods, no substitutions, no OMM, no oopsie anything, no coconut bark, no coconut oil in coffee, no added fats (just the fat already in the food, needed for cooking, or for a bit of flavor like a bit of butter on a steak or veg).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bad mouthing any of these things. The addition of these items works for some, and I will miss them, but they just don't work for me. There might even be one or two fellow community members that are going through the same thing I was going though that might find my struggle helpful.

I'm glad to be back, and I look forward to being an active community member again.

I also used lots of substitutes when I first discovered LC. It did not work for long. But my nutrition has evolved a lot & become very clean, pure & unprocessed. I love the way I eat now but it would have freaked me out as extreme way back when. lol...

I've found that leaving the substitutes out is easy. I don't miss them at all. The only hard part was thinking about not eating them before I eliminated them.

I'm on ATKINS 72... because I have to be to make it work. I stalled on my first run (at -84) but that was 10 years ago... NO, I can't eat 'just one'. I think I may have gone too low fat before so am trying to to include some fats in my eating. It's hard in a world that believes fat is evil!

Welcome back & good luck!

__________________
"Eat all you need to not be hungry, eat only what you need to not be hungry... eat on plan." Dr Atkins Diet Revolution @1972

"NO, I CAN'T EAT JUST ONE!" "Lead me not into carb temptation!"

Multiple Sclerosis Dx 2001 *a lot of meds* now SP * Able to stand & shuffle a few steps with support: does not = meaningful exercise. Harder to do by just WOE... but gotta stay ON it.